New York-headquartered alternative investment firm New Mountain Capital has held the final close of its seventh control-oriented fund, New Mountain Partners VII, with $15.4bn in capital commitments.
New Mountain describes itself as “a business that builds businesses,” and says it has generated over $85bn of enterprise value gains in its private equity companies since its inception, without one PE bankruptcy or missed interest payment.
The fund closed at its hard cap of $14bn of LP commitments, in addition to approximately $1.4bn of LP commitments, the firm’s largest GP commitment to date.
New Mountain’s previous flagship fund, Fund VI, was also oversubscribed and closed with approximately $9.6bn of commitments in 2020. That fund is now fully invested in platform companies, with the remaining capital reserved for follow-on growth investments.
Investors in Fund VII include approximately 400 pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, foundations, endowments, family offices, RIAs and high net worth individuals. The vast majority of Fund VI investors returned as investors for Fund VII, while the firm also added approximately 100 new investors globally.
Fund VII intends to continue to pursue New Mountain’s long-standing strategy emphasising non-cyclical growth and business building for companies in carefully chosen “defensive growth” industries.
Specific areas of focus for the firm, and Fund VII, include life sciences and advanced materials, healthcare technologies, advanced data and analytics, infrastructure services, digital transformation services, software, financial and insurance services, technology-enabled business services and “future of work” enterprises.
Fund VII has already acquired two companies ahead of its final close – Consor Holdings, a provider of transportation and waste water engineering, and Grant Thornton Advisors, a US accounting, tax and advisory firm.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett advised on the fund.
